Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Motorcycle Alphabet City Tour - Ride #1

So, as part of our motorcycle fun, Troy and I enjoy participating in a little game of sorts. It's the called the Alphabet City Tour. The premise is that we travel throughout the state to 26 places that start with each letter of the alphabet. So far, we have actually NOT completed this, but we made a valiant effort last year. We completed about 20 of the 26, I think.

Basically, at each city, you take a picture of yourself (with your motorcycle, preferably) in front of a sign or something that has the name of the city or town on it. That can be quite a feat in some of the smaller towns in our great state.

Sunday was such a gorgeous day and that weather was just perfect, so we decided to get a jump on our Alphabet City Tour (2007 Edition). We grabbed the digital camera, which makes this endeavor all the easier, gassed up our bikes and headed out of town. Our first stop was Greenwood. It is a fairly substantial "burg" and finding a sign in the quaint downtown area was not difficult at all.

The next town we stopped in was New Whiteland and although I followed a sign indicating a library and those often have the name of the town/city, this one did not. However, about 1/4 of a mile down the road there was a strip of office buildings with a VERY large sign for New Whiteland. Bingo! It was only after we had taken our pictures that we realized there was a police man checking for speeders and we could have stood next to his car, which had "New Whiteland" emblazened on the side.


A few miles down the road was Franklin where we spotted this church right off of IN-31. Of course, as soon as we had come to a stop and dismounted our bikes for the photo op, Troy realized there was a small problem with his bike. At first, he thought it was a fuel leak, but after consulting his manual and more thoroughly checking out the situation, he realized he was a fuel safety overflow tube of sorts (he could explain in detail what it's called, but I won't even pretend to understand. I put fuel and a key in and hope that the "magic" doesn't leak out along the way.). He cleared up the problem in no time and decided it was safe to continue. We got our shots at the Franklin Church of Christ and headed out. The day was getting late (we hadn't started until about 4:30 in the afternoon) and we still had one more stop to make before heading back home and preparing ourselves for the week to come.

Our final city of the day was Edinburgh, which is home to a sizeable outlet mall. I've never actually been to it, but I've heard other people say that it's the place to find some good deals around Christmas time. Maybe I'll have to venture out there next holiday season.

It had been a gorgeous day and it was great to see so many other women out riding. But ladies, please take some free advice from someone who knows. Get some good riding gear! Sure, a t-shirt and jeans feels great when you're whizzing down the road and you may be the safest rider out there, but you're small and car drivers sometimes don't see us. If you remember how much it hurt to fall off of your bicycle and skin your knee as a kid, you can only imagine the pain of coming off of your motorcycle at even 20 or 30 miles per hour when a car tries to push you out of your lane or worse. If your boyfriend/husband says it's not cool to wear a helmet and that you'll be hot wearing all of that gear in the summer. Remind him how much he cares about you and your cute little face and body and tell him that if you get hot, it just means you have to ride faster! Hopefully he will be able to keep up. ;-)

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